In a Macabre Twist, Plastic Buries Chance to Reuse Plots

OSLO—Oslo's funeral director has long wrestled with the particularly morbid job of dealing with Norway's longtime insistence on "plastic graves." Now, she is using technology to fight back.

Shortly after World War II, Norwegians began a three-decade-long practice of wrapping their dead in plastic before laying them to rest in wooden caskets, believing the practice was more sanitary. Hundreds of thousands of burials later, gravediggers realized the airtight conditions kept the corpses from decomposing.

Like many European cities, Oslo reuses graves every 20 years. Or would, if a ruling from the 1950's to wrap bodies in plastic hadn't disrupted the practice, preventing decomposition. Now, Oslo has found a solution. WSJ's Ellen Jervell reports.

"The priest says 'ashes to ashes,' but we ain't got no ashes on the other end," Margaret Eckbo, Oslo's director of funerals, said while walking around Grefsen cemetery on a hill overlooking the city.

"From ashes to plastic doesn't sound all that good," she said.

The presence of plastic-wrap graves doesn't bode well for a municipality where real estate is scarce and expensive. For centuries, Norwegians—and others in Europe—have reused graves after 20 years, so as to conserve land.

Norway Confronts a Grave Issue

Fredrik Karlsson watched a cloud of lime rise from a grave being treated at Grefsen cemetery. Ellen Emmerentze Jervell for The Wall Street Journal

Norwegians get free cemetery plots when they die, but only for 20 years. After that, somebody's got to pay rent to keep the plot and the headstone. Otherwise, the plot becomes available to bury somebody else. Old bones and casket parts are left there under new coffins with new inhabitants. But there's a problem.

"The law tells us that if you open a grave from the period when they used plastic, you're not allowed to reuse it," Ms. Eckbo said. The former city councilwoman used to take walks past neglected graves trying to think of a way to solve the problem.

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Even if nobody was paying the rent, graves couldn't be recycled if they contained plastic-wrapped corpses. At first she favored expanding cemeteries, but that was an expensive and unpopular prospect. "Politicians aren't keen on giving up space where they could have built elderly homes or kindergartens, especially not to dead people."

"You may say wrapping people in plastic was the result of some pretty poor planning," Kjell Larsen Ostbye, a former graveyard worker, said. Mr. Ostbye, relying on what he learned in chemistry class, gave Ms. Eckbo a workable idea.

He calculated that by poking holes in the ground and through the plastic and then injecting a lime-based solution into the corpse, decomposition would be accelerated. It worked, opening the door for Mr. Ostbye to create a business called Norsk Miljostabilisering, or Nomias.

Nomias has now performed the process on 17,000 Norwegian graves located in several cities. Because an estimated 350,000 plastic graves were created, he has his work cut out for him.

Jump-starting decay is neither difficult nor prohibitively expensive. It takes about 10 minutes per grave and leaves no trace. Within two weeks, grass grows over holes in the ground, and within a year a body will decompose.

Rikard Karlsson, a Swedish engineer who left the cement-mixing business to help Mr. Ostbye perfect his methods, said the work is good. "Somebody's got to do it," Mr. Karlsson said. The city of Oslo pays the company 4,000 Norwegian kroner, or about $670, per grave

Oslo pays for the process, but writes letters to family members beforehand to get the green light. Only a handful have said no, Ms. Eckbo said.

Equipped with a utility belt, long pipes and a computer that measures pressure and identifies where the holes should go, Mr. Karlsson worked on a grave on a warm September day as Mr. Ostbye and Ms. Eckbo stood by wearing goggles to protect their eyes from a cloud of escaping lime. The steady hum of the worker's tractor was all that could be heard.

"We had to figure out a way to do the job that did not disturb people who spent some quiet time around here," Mr. Karlson said. It isn't uncommon for people to stop him as he works to ask what's going on. At first, his answer makes some of them uncomfortable, but they usually come around.

"I must say that I think this is a good thing, especially for future generations," Berit Skrauvset, 77 years old, said while sitting close to her late husband's family grave to plant flowers. Ms. Skrauvset spends a lot of her time visiting family members and friends laid to rest at Grefsen, and had often wondered why big machines were poking holes in the ground.

"The plastic thing was obviously a mistake and we all want things to end the natural way, don't we?" she said. "One has to assume that they don't feel any of it when lying down there."

While there is plenty more work to do in Norway, Messrs Ostbye and Karlsson are hoping to be welcomed to other countries, including Germany.

Ms. Eckbo, Oslo's cemetery boss, said the solution has been a godsend. As she walked through Grefsen Sept. 23, she was smiling widely and pointing to the newfound capacity. "Here, there, there," she said. "You wouldn't believe it, but we have too many available spots at the moment."

Berit Carlsson, walking with her dog and husband through the cemetery, found reason to make light of the situation.

"It has to be a relief for those who are wrapped in plastic," Ms. Carlsson, 61, said. "Perhaps the soul now wanders where it should.

This reminds me of a story I read about William Bass, and the founding of the "Tennessee Body Farm". A hadless body was found at a gravesite i the 196s, and the authorities called in William Bass to find out how long the person had been dead, and when the murder had been committed. Bass estimated that the person had been dead for about 6 months.

It turned out later that the person had been killed about 100 years earlier, during the Civil War. Grave robbers had opened the casket looking for swords, buttons, and other civil war articles to sell. Embarrassed about his 100 year error, Bass founded the "Tennessee Body Farm".

Embalming became popular during the Civil War. The person had died of a HEAD wound, so the head had not contained embalming fluid, decomposed normally, and went back to nature. The torso, full of embalming fluid, had survived, zombielike for over 100 years so far. After reading this, it's "back to nature" for me- wooden casket and no embalming fluid.

Sartre was right about the absurdity of human existence. Kansas made the same observation in "Dust in the Wind." And this WSJ story lends another variation to the theme: after trying to become something permanent and inevitably failing, your lifeless body might linger unaltered until it defaults on the rent. A fittingly frustrating denouement.

What kind of people just stick their family and loved ones in the ground for 20 years and then let strangers get heaped on top of them over and over and over. I suppose its a cultural thing, but that's just disgusting. I'd have my family and loved ones cremated and disposed of cleanly before I stuck them in a common hole to rot, and allowed other rotting corpses to be heaped on them over and over and over, and certainly the same for myself when its my time. YECH!

"At first she favored expanding cemeteries, but that was an expensive and unpopular prospect. 'Politicians aren't keen on giving up space where they could have built elderly homes or kindergartens, especially not to dead people.'"

Here in America, the dead are solid voters for the Democrat party, so their opinions matter. Politicians in Norway should be glad they don't have to take the opinions of dead people into account when making decisions.

Jeesh, have these Norwegians no shame? Grave desecration and plot stealing?

I showed this article to a friend of mine who immigrated from Norway, and he shook his head saying "I see we are a laughing stock before the world again". He then muttered something in Norwegian that I'm sure was an appropriate adjective for the situation.

"Somebody's got to do it", said Mr. Karlsson. Indeed. 17,000 treated graves thus far, at $670 per grave, $11.4M. 350,000 to go, for a healthy $234,000,000. 10 minutes per grave, or $4,000 an hour. Great work, if you can get it. Superb.

"Mr. Ostbye, relying on what he learned in chemistry class, gave Ms. Eckbo a workable idea."

That might have been what Mr. Ostbye told Ms. Eckbo, but we all know he got the idea from watching episodes of CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, Law and Order, or NCIS. Let's be honest the concept of decomposing a body with a caustic solution so prolific of an idea in murder mysteries that I'm pretty sure I could find an Agatha Christie story that uses the idea.

Frankly, I'm disappointed that he didn't take a page from Fight Club and propose making soap for salons from the dead bodies.

Norway is not the US where we have virtually unlimited land. Europe is a small place with a long history. I think that reusing graves is a great idea. Cremation is a better one but that will take a while to catch on as religion starts to wane more.

Not sure about you but I already put meat in plastic when in the freezer and it remains fresh for a year or two at best depending on the kind of meat. You could keep it frozen with or without plastic and it wouldn't decay appreciably for thousands of years, but you still wouldn't call it fresh or be eating it after more than a year or two unless you were pretty desperate I think. It is a matter of degree. In low temperatures decay processes proceed more slowly. In plastic the corpses are simply unable to decay at a normal rate due to the plastic limiting oxygen and thus only anaerobic decomposition will take place and the much faster decay caused by bacteria which need oxygen is slowed or stopped. It is still a matter of degree. After 20 years the corpses may not be much decomposed but nor would they be looking too good as far as 'freshness' goes.

I agree cremation is a good idea, and also re-using graves. Although I struggle a bit with the twenty years limit as seeming reasonable but then it does have the option for family to pay for it thereafter. I was for cremation myself before I reverted to Islam. However I'd challenge the idea religion is waning if you mean globally. I note you say "as it starts to wane" which may mean you acknowledge it is yet to start, but the "to wane more" at the end then kind of confuses the message again. I also remind that many religions allow or even encourage cremation. Actually it is Islam which is probably the most significant one against and there for sure 'waning' is not a word which would apply anyway.

Not offering any constructive suggestion here just putting perspective on what you say. I personally reckon that the disposal of nuclear waste itself a vastly more complex and serious problem for human health and profitable land use puts another perspective on the issue of getting rid of the dead of our species in a fashion which doesn't encroach too much on either human health or land use.

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